GTX-1070 and FX-6300 bottleneck

[FMod]

This chart doesn't even come close to suggesting that Ryzen is not good enough for Skyrim. This is a game with a 60fps cap. The OP likely has a 60hz screen anyway (most people do) - so it's really pointless in my opinion to suggest someone wait for Coffee Lake.

That's stock Skyrim. Mods will drop fps.

 

I don't think i3-8xxx will be beatable for the price, for Skyrim and similar.

All in all, it's basically like i5-2500K if you get the basic 4/4 i3, or like i5-6600K with the overclockable i3-8350K. Of course, prices have risen to the point where new i3 cost like old i5, so no free lunch... still.

 

Elsewhere, Ryzen will eventually be better going forward.

[iXenite]

 

That's stock Skyrim. Mods will drop fps.

 

I don't think i3-8xxx will be beatable for the price, for Skyrim and similar.

All in all, it's basically like i5-2500K if you get the basic 4/4 i3, or like i5-6600K with the overclockable i3-8350K. Of course, prices have risen to the point where new i3 cost like old i5, so no free lunch... still.

 

Elsewhere, Ryzen will eventually be better going forward.

 

 

Ryzen 5 1600 CPU's only cost ~$200 USD. For that money you get six cores and 12 threads. You can get a 4 core - 4 thread CPU for $110 USD with Ryzen 3. I don't see much value in Intel right now.

[bajs11]

problem with Ryzen is that a lot of older games are not optimized for the new AMD cpus

benchmarks show that even the lowly i5 was able to beat the might Ryzen 7 in most games

Edited September 15, 2017 by bajs11

[iXenite]

problem with Ryzen is that a lot of older games are not optimized for the new AMD cpus

benchmarks show that even the lowly i5 was able to beat the might Ryzen 7 in most games

 

Will you spend the rest of your life playing older games? Will anyone be doing that? Even if you did - they're far less CPU bound then games are today. The only real reason why Ryzen suffers on the much older titles is due to IPC. AMD has historically lower IPC than Intel chips, and thus suffer in single threaded applications. Older games usually only used one core, and sometimes two (but no more than that).

 

That is why AMD's CPU's from the Bulldozer generation were so incredibly bad at the time, but have begun improving in recent years. The FX 8300 for instance is a better CPU today than it was when it launched because games are beginning to use more and more threads/cores. I don't see Ryzen performing marginally worse than Intel in old games as a con. It will perform just fine in older titles, especially if you have a good GPU, and it will perform very well moving forward.

[jones177]

Hi

 

When it comes to CPUs & gaming I think the new minimum is 4 cores eight threads.

 

For modding games I go by single thread performance charts. I know that my old i7 2600k can play my heavily modded games at good frame rate as well as all the modern games I have tested. It is paired with a GTX 1080 & displays at 3440 x1440.

 

On the Passmark Single Thread Performance chart it gets a score of 1942. There are plenty of Ryzens that can outperform it. As long as the Ryzen CPU has 4 cores/8 threads & has a Passmark thread score over 1942 I see no problem with it.

 

So basicly I would buy a Ryzen 5 1600x but I would not by a Ryzen 7 1700x. Not for modded games anyway. See the chart. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

 

 

Later

[iXenite]

Hi

 

When it comes to CPUs & gaming I think the new minimum is 4 cores eight threads.

 

 

 

Ryzen 5 1600 is a 6 core 12 thread chip. It's really great for right now - and probably a while into the future. The 4 core 8 thread chip by AMD is Ryzen 5 1400.

 

I think that the Ryzen 7 1700 would be a better long term investment. That is an 8 core 16 thread chip. I look at like this, the Ryzen 1600 is the i5 2500K, and the Ryzen 1700 is the i7 2600K. People that bought the i5 2500K were able to really enjoy a great CPU for a long time, but it's really showing its age these days. So much so that people argue that it's no longer worth using. The i7 2600K is still doing strong in comparison. It seemed unnecessary at the time - but in the long run it payed off.

 

Now as we move towards more cores being important over IPC - the i7 2600K is going to become less viable. We can confirm this when looking at even the i7 7700K. It's the best CPU on the market right now for high refresh rate gaming (due to its IPC). However, when it comes to multi-core processes (streaming, multi-tasking, and now gaming) the i7 7700K (4 cores - 8 threads) suffers in comparison. If you play Ghost Recon: Wildlands with an i7 7700K you will get higher framerates than a Ryzen 1700. However, you'll also get much more stuttering intermittently throughout gameplay with the i7 - while the Ryzen 1700 doesn't get any.

 

You are right that 4 cores 8 threads is the new minimum. Any less and you're gimping yourself. However, I do think for mainstream gaming everyone would be better off considering a 6 core 12 thread chip as the minimum (best bang for your buck), and the 8 core 16 thread chip as the real investment.

[fftfan]

I was in a similar situation but older components so I bought GTX 1080 and i7-7700. I do think the GTX 1070 with Ryzen would also do quite well if you intend to play at 1440p or 1080p.

 

I will take the gtx 1070 and sold my old GPU, CPU, BO, RAM and some ps4 games. Than i will buy CPU (ryzen 5 1600), BO (MSI B350 PC MATE) and RAM [HyperX Predator DDR4 16GB (Kit 2x8GB) 3200MHz CL16 DIMM 1.35V].

Very good plan I expect this will work great. I'll add that Fallout 4 greatly benefits from an SSD, honestly the loading times were my biggest issue with the game when I played on Xbox.

 

That's stock Skyrim. Mods will drop fps.

That's definitely a key consideration to keep in mind.

 

problem with Ryzen is that a lot of older games are not optimized for the new AMD cpus

benchmarks show that even the lowly i5 was able to beat the might Ryzen 7 in most games

I noticed this as well so I chose to go i7 for best Fallout 4/Skyrim/SSE performance since I want to heavily mod my games, play at 4K and may want to try using an ENB. I like installing a ton of cool stuff so I'm already at 200 mods after a couple weeks.

 

 

Will you spend the rest of your life playing older games? Will anyone be doing that? Even if you did - they're far less CPU bound then games are today. The only real reason why Ryzen suffers on the much older titles is due to IPC. AMD has historically lower IPC than Intel chips, and thus suffer in single threaded applications. Older games usually only used one core, and sometimes two (but no more than that).

 

That is why AMD's CPU's from the Bulldozer generation were so incredibly bad at the time, but have begun improving in recent years. The FX 8300 for instance is a better CPU today than it was when it launched because games are beginning to use more and more threads/cores. I don't see Ryzen performing marginally worse than Intel in old games as a con. It will perform just fine in older titles, especially if you have a good GPU, and it will perform very well moving forward.

Tests showed stronger results on Intel for Fallout 4 so I went Intel with an i7. I wanted to surpass the level of hardware demand shown on the benchmarking videos since mods will place further demands on your PC to stay running well.

 

For example on the GPU side you could do kind of okay on 1080p with something like a 1060 3GB or 1050Ti on vanilla but once you start adding mods especially the more complex ones the in-game performance will quickly drop below an acceptable level. You would have to think twice about installing a mod in case it may cause slowdowns. I'm sure a Ryzen would do fine in most cases although I want to heavily mod my game and play at 4K.

 

I'll be spending a good while with this setup. I'm planning to stick with current components till TES VI or Fallout 5 are out or maybe Starfield if I like it. I'll also have the fallback option of going to 1440p or 1080p if needed for future games I want to play until then if lowering settings won't suffice.

 

I'm happy with current visuals on my PC so I'm sure I'll still be fine with Medium or High settings on future games, unless it reaches a point where the visuals get really washed out like PS3/360 versions of cross-gen games in 2014/2015.

Edited September 29, 2017 by fftfan

[iXenite]

 

Tests showed stronger results on Intel for Fallout 4 so I went Intel with an i7. I wanted to surpass the level of hardware demand shown on the benchmarking videos since mods will place further demands on your PC to stay running well.

 

For example on the GPU side you could do kind of okay on 1080p with something like a 1060 3GB or 1050Ti on vanilla but once you start adding mods especially the more complex ones the in-game performance will quickly drop below an acceptable level. You would have to think twice about installing a mod in case it may cause slowdowns. I'm sure a Ryzen would do fine in most cases although I want to heavily mod my game and play at 4K.

 

I'll be spending a good while with this setup. I'm planning to stick with current components till TES VI or Fallout 5 are out or maybe Starfield if I like it. I'll also have the fallback option of going to 1440p or 1080p if needed for future games I want to play until then if lowering settings won't suffice.

 

I'm happy with current visuals on my PC so I'm sure I'll still be fine with Medium or High settings on future games, unless it reaches a point where the visuals get really washed out like PS3/360 versions of cross-gen games in 2014/2015.

 

 

If you're interested in gaining the best highest frame rates in Fallout 4 and Skyrim then I guess Intel is the way to go. The same applies to those that want to game at 144hz. But if you want to play modern games that are actually well built, and be prepared for the future, I still think Ryzen is the better choice overall. Any potential performance losses in older titles (or horribly designed ones like Fallout 4) are acceptable. But that's me - you obviously think differently and that's fine. The GTX 1060 3GB should be fine even with a lot of mods. You can have a very pretty Skyrim and still keep it under the 3GB VRAM limit. The GTX 1060 can't even begin to use all of it's 6GB's of VRAM anyway. It's too weak of a GPU to do that. The performance will fall apart trying to play certain games at Ultra settings. Dropping those games to High settings keeps your framerate in check and your VRAM usage within the 3GB limit.

[jones177]

Hi

 

I disagree about the GTX 1060 3GB.

 

For modding you need all the vram you can afford. I skipped the GTX 7000 series because they only had 3gb vram. At the time I was using a GTX 680 4gb. My heavily modded Skyrim game could run for about 2 hours between CTDs on it. With my GTX 670 with 2gbs it only lasted 20 seconds. Running times stayed the same with a GTX 970 & GTX 980. When I upgraded to a GTX 980 ti with 6gb vram my time between CTDs went up to 6 hours average. Now the same game with a GTX 1080 is as stable as my Skyrim SE game.

I always say get the 6gb version if you are going to mod games.

 

I also disagree that a 1060 is weak.

 

A GTX 1060 = a GTX 980 & my 980 had no problem running all my games at 1440 resolution. I never had to drop to high or medium. I didn't even have to switch off hair works in Witcher 3 to have a totally smooth experience. If I would had stayed at 1080 resolution a 1060/980 would be just fine.

 

 

It really depends on the game engine if resolution uses more vram. In Skyrim, SE & Fallout 4 vram has nothing to do with screen resolution. It stays the same. In Witcher 3 a resolution bump uses only about 200 mbs vram. Dropping texture quality from ultra to medium drops the vram about 100mbs. Masseffect Andromeda is a 300mbs bump from 1080 to 1440 but a whopping 1 gb going from 1440 to 4k.

 

I have never had an issue with CPU stutter with an unmodded game in modern times. If I did I still would not get a Ryzen. IPC is too low for my modded games. If my i7 2600k died tomorrow I would replace it with a i7-7820X. I would get about the same IPC performance as my i7 6700k plus 4 more cores. In 4 days the CoffeeLake i7 7800k will be out. If it can match or better the i7-7820X when it comes to IPC I will go that route.

I am hoping that Ryzen 2 will address the weakness in the lineup and then I would have a real choice.

 

Later

[iXenite]

Hi

 

I disagree about the GTX 1060 3GB.

 

For modding you need all the vram you can afford. I skipped the GTX 7000 series because they only had 3gb vram. At the time I was using a GTX 680 4gb. My heavily modded Skyrim game could run for about 2 hours between CTDs on it. With my GTX 670 with 2gbs it only lasted 20 seconds. Running times stayed the same with a GTX 970 & GTX 980. When I upgraded to a GTX 980 ti with 6gb vram my time between CTDs went up to 6 hours average. Now the same game with a GTX 1080 is as stable as my Skyrim SE game.

I always say get the 6gb version if you are going to mod games.

 

I also disagree that a 1060 is weak.

 

A GTX 1060 = a GTX 980 & my 980 had no problem running all my games at 1440 resolution. I never had to drop to high or medium. I didn't even have to switch off hair works in Witcher 3 to have a totally smooth experience. If I would had stayed at 1080 resolution a 1060/980 would be just fine.

 

 

It really depends on the game engine if resolution uses more vram. In Skyrim, SE & Fallout 4 vram has nothing to do with screen resolution. It stays the same. In Witcher 3 a resolution bump uses only about 200 mbs vram. Dropping texture quality from ultra to medium drops the vram about 100mbs. Masseffect Andromeda is a 300mbs bump from 1080 to 1440 but a whopping 1 gb going from 1440 to 4k.

 

I have never had an issue with CPU stutter with an unmodded game in modern times. If I did I still would not get a Ryzen. IPC is too low for my modded games. If my i7 2600k died tomorrow I would replace it with a i7-7820X. I would get about the same IPC performance as my i7 6700k plus 4 more cores. In 4 days the CoffeeLake i7 7800k will be out. If it can match or better the i7-7820X when it comes to IPC I will go that route.

I am hoping that Ryzen 2 will address the weakness in the lineup and then I would have a real choice.

 

Later

 

I'm really talking about playing modern games that are releasing right now. Not old games, and not mods. I personally believe that PC is an investment, something you'll use for a number of years for a variety of games. If someone is interested in 1080p 60hz gaming in 2017 (with modern games) then you really only need the GTX 1060 3GB. Many people discount the memory compression present in Pascal cards, so that 3GB's is very efficient. If you play Ghost Recon: Wildlands on Ultra settings you're going to have a bad time. If you play on the High settings you'll be fine.

 

It doesn't matter if you have a 3GB or 6GB card - the GTX 1060 simply isn't strong enough to actually use that 6GB's properly. If your standards are low and framerates below 60 are fine - then I guess it really doesn't matter. Now, to be fair, I can completely understand that the GTX 1060 3GB would be much more appealing if it came with 4GB's instead. I honestly wish that it did - but in the end it does have more value than the GTX 1060 6GB at the current prices.

 

If you only play modded Skyrim, or you can't manage to find more optimized textures then that's fine. I don't understand using textures beyond 2K at 1080p if you're using a GTX 1060 - but you know people think differently. Higher res textures will fill up the VRAM - so if you really need the extra I can completely understand choosing a GPU with a higher VRAM amount. People have different needs and opinions - that's fine.